The Syracuse Pictures are digital from start to finish, created, informed and controlled by Gerbarg’s physical gestures and sensibilities. They begin as colored light in a 3D virtual environment: colorful, expressive paint strokes that Gerbarg further develops into works on canvas.

Gerbarg exploits the functionality of computer graphics software and digital image making tools by putting on 3DVR goggles and making expressive, often whimsical gestures in explosions of color, referencing both the natural and built environments. Her hands and body perform physical gestures, in a three-dimensional virtual world, where she surrounds herself with brush strokes of colored light. Then, with a variety of digital imaging techniques, Gerbarg takes sections of this colorful, 3D virtual painting and creates impactful, moving, human scale, pictures on canvas.

Gerbarg is a third-generation abstract expressionist painter, who early in her creative practice, started working with digital tools. She was a visiting artist in several of the first computer graphics and 3D animation research facilities.

The viewer feels the movement and depth of space in these pictures because the images start out as expressive physical gestures in a three-dimensional environment. These digital paintings “carry a distinct time stamp of today,” Magdalena Sawon, Postmasters Gallery.

Gerbarg grew up in the foothills of the Catskills, surrounded by cornfields and mountains. She lives in New York City and has exhibited her work internationally.

This new 3DVR painting on canvas is one of The Syracuse Pictures. It was painted in a virtual world at the Future Reality Lab, Courant Institute, New York University and printed on canvas at Light Work, Syracuse University, in 2017.

Gerbarg is a third-generation abstract expressionist painter, who early in her creative practice, started working with digital tools. She was a visiting artist in several of the first computer graphics and 3D animation research facilities.

Her latest body of work, The Syracuse Pictures, are digital from start to finish, created, informed and controlled by Gerbarg’s physical gestures and sensibilities. They begin as colored light in a 3D virtual environment: colorful, expressive paint strokes that Gerbarg further develops into works on canvas.

Gerbarg exploits the functionality of computer graphics software and digital image making tools, by putting on 3DVR goggles and making expressive, often whimsical gestures, in explosions of color, referencing both the natural and built environments. Her hands and body perform physical gestures, in a three-dimensional virtual world, where she surrounds herself with brush strokes of colored light. Then, with a variety of digital imaging techniques, Gerbarg takes sections of this colorful, 3D virtual painting and creates impactful, moving, human scale, pictures on canvas.

The viewer feels the movement and depth of space in these pictures because the images start out as expressive physical gestures in a three-dimensional environment. As Magdalena Sawon, Postmasters Gallery, puts it, these digital paintings “carry a distinct time stamp of today.”

Gerbarg grew up in the foothills of the Catskills, surrounded by cornfields and mountains. She has exhibited her work internationally.

The Syracuse Pictures are painted in a virtual world at the Future Reality Lab, Courant Institute, New York University and printed on canvas at Light Work, Syracuse University, in 2017.

Summary

She is a studio artist who works in a wide variety of media, including painting, printmaking, ceramics, 3D animation and Virtual Reality. She pioneered the use of computer graphics paint systems in the fine arts and continues to explore new digital image making technologies.

Art Training

Having studied with painters in Woodstock as a child, she began painting seriously when she moved to New York City in the early 1970’s and attended the New York Studio School of Drawing Painting and Sculpture. As a young member of a group that included “second generation” abstract expressionist and color field painters, she often attended crits in their studios, and participated in museum and gallery visits led by Clement Greenberg.

Quote

“The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.It doesn't make much difference how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.”

Artist Statement February 2016

Painting has to operate on multiple layers of consciousness. What your eye sees your mind understands both consciously and unconsciously. Making art is always both a formal and intuitive process. The underpinnings are experience in the medium, uncertainty of how the painting will progress and what initial parameters, if any, I’ve set myself and what is going on in my life: what I’m thinking, experiencing, remembering, reacting to and feeling.

Artist Statement SIGGRAPH 1987

I do all my imaging on a computer graphics system that has software specifically developed to meet my needs. This software allows me to works in ways that are not possible in pigmented physical mediums. Still the images as they exist on the CRT are not in themselves satisfying as art pieces, so I further enhance them by translating them into physical mediums. The two mediums I currently prefer are printmaking and painting. Both involve experimentation with images taken from the computer through the film recorder and use film as a transfer medium. Creating the actual physical art works is a laborious, time intensive process. There are as many technical problems to solve in the translation process as there are on the computer end.